Slaves

Not only freemen but slaves, whether belonging to the testator or to another person, may be instituted heirs.

To guard against the contingency of the death of the slave in the lifetime of the testator, several slaves might be instituted by way of substitution.

A slave belonging to the testator must be simultaneously instituted and enfranchised in the following manner:

, that it did not sufficiently define the persons who might be made slaves.

Slavery, then, being the creature of positive legislation alone, can be created only by legislation that shall so particularly describe the persons to be made slaves, that they may be distinguished from all others.

Under such a code, multitudes, who had either never been purchased as slaves, or who had once been emancipated, were doubtless seized and reduced to servitude by individual rapacity, without any more public cognizance of the act, than if the person so seized had been a stray sheep.

These truths were known to the Roman legislators, amongst whom, as I have already observed, slaves, only, who were not considered as citizens, were tortured.

and which the Romans, in many respects barbarous, and whose savage virtue has been too much admired, reserved for the slaves alone.

If it be an association of families, there will be twenty thousand men, and eighty thousand slaves;

And slaves need the stimulus of good hopes no less, nay, even more than free men, to make them steadfast.

Then what if I show you besides that in some households nearly all the servants are in fetters and yet continually try to run away, whereas in others they are under no restraint and are willing to work and to stay at their posts?

What art is dearer to servants, or pleasanter to a wife, or more delightful to children, or more agreeable to friends?

again, the same lawgiver said, A slave shall not be the lover of a free boy nor follow after him, or else he shall receive fifty blows of the public lash.

your fathers, when they were laying down laws to regulate the habits of men and those acts that inevitably flow from human nature, forbade slaves to do those things which they thought ought to be done by free men.

and he offered the defence the opportunity of examining his slaves under torture;

The audience had also included slaves, namely, himself, his brother, the fluteplayer Hicesius, and Meletus’ slave.

I supported this account by handing over my slave for torture, to prove that I was ill at the time in question and had not even left my bed;

As to the slaves, if he considered that they were answering his questions truthfully, well and good;

You do not need to be reminded, gentlemen, that the one occasion when compulsion is as absolute and as effective as is humanly possible, and when the rights of a case are ascertained thereby most surely and most certainly, arises when there is an abundance of witnesses, both slave and free, and it is possible to put pressure upon the free men by exacting an oath or word of honor, the most solemn a …

(v) Also anybody can enjoy the pleasures of the body, a slave no less than the noblest of mankind;

For two years he conducted the business of the factory and paid to Therippides the hire of the slaves, but to me, though he took the profits for two years, amounting to thirty minae, he has turned over neither that sum nor the interest upon it.

But the house and the fourteen slaves and the thirty minae which you gave over into my hands, could not have been assessed at any such sum as that which you agreed to pay to the tax-group.

These slaves the defendant took to himself, together with all the other things given to us as surety with them.

When my bearers got to my door, my mother and the women servants began shrieking and wailing, and it was with difficulty that I was at length carried to a bath.

No one of you would have been seized with a fit of laughter, if he had happened to be present when I was dragged and stripped and maltreated, when I was borne home on a litter to the house which I had left strong and well, and my mother rushed out, and the women set up such a wailing and screaming (as if someone had died in the house) that some of the neighbors sent to inquire what it was that had happened.

to Apollo the Averter sacrifice an ox and wear garlands, both free men and slaves, and observe one day of rest;

Athenians, you hear the humanity of the law, which does not permit even slaves to be assaulted.

There are in Greece men so mild and humane in disposition that though they have often been wronged by you, and though they have inherited a natural hostility towards you, yet they permit no insult to be offered even to the men whom they have bought for a price and keep as their slaves.

Other slaves one may see called to strict account by their masters, but here we see the very opposite:

Do not take into consideration that they are severally Syrus or Manes or what not, while this fellow is Phormio.

Then why, you unparalleled scoundrels, instead of confiscating estates and houses, and putting them on the schedule, did you imprison and maltreat men who were full citizens, as well as those unhappy aliens, whom you treated more outrageously than your own domestic slaves?

If, gentlemen of the jury, you will turn over in your minds the question what is the difference between being a slave and being a free man, you will find that the biggest difference is that the body of a slave is made responsible for all his misdeeds, whereas corporal punishment is the last penalty to inflict on a free man.

for they knew well that, if they told any such lie as this, they would at once be convicted by the slaves when these were put to the torture.

Much industry and much learning have been bestowed in the United States of America on the question whether the Slave was in the early stages of society a recognised member of the Family.

There seems to be something in the institution of Slavery which has at all times either shocked or perplexed mankind, however little habituated to reflection, and however slightly advanced in the cultivation of its moral instincts.

He was similarly liable for the torts of his slaves;

Mark the days which come from Zeus, duly telling your slaves of them, and that the thirtieth day of the month is best for one to look over the work and to deal out supplies.

Had it not been for the spread of printing, and men's coming out into the light of learning, and the correcting of those fabrications, it would have become fixed in the minds of the people of the West that the Easterner sets his wife to the ploughing, and that he sows qawārmā (fried meat) believing that he will reap lambs from it, and sows charcoal to reap slaves.

Do not even among the nations the strictest masters, those most tenacious of discipline, forbid their slaves to marry abroad — that is, lest they break out into wantonness, desert their duties, betray their masters' affairs to strangers?

A motion was once made in the senate that slaves should be distinguished from free men by their dress;

Who did not hate Vedius Pollio worse than his own slaves did, because he fattened his lampreys on human blood and ordered those who had given him any offence to be thrown into the pool—what else than of serpents?

Just as cruel masters are pointed out throughout the whole city and are hateful and detestable, so the wrong of kings extends more widely, and their infamy and odium are handed down to the ages;

So you will find a slave who would rather be flogged than cuffed, and who thinks death and stripes more bearable than insulting words.

The same reason explains why the impertinence of our slaves, insolent toward their masters, delights us—a boldness which only then makes free with the guests if it has begun with the master;

when in every seventh year slaves are loosed into liberty;

Slavery is still a natural and beneficent industrial system among some peoples;

In the days of slavery it would have been quite as accurate to say that the natural relation between master and workman was one of coercion.

When slave-owners invest their slaves in an adventure, their share of the profits or losses (i.

Please observe also that among all the directions I am now giving you, I give no orders to slaves.